


Love Will Have Its Sacrifices

by mintpearlvoice



Category: The Wicked + The Divine
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 15:54:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2513387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintpearlvoice/pseuds/mintpearlvoice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They never fail who die in a great cause."<br/>-George Gordon Byron, former incarnation of the young god Lucifer</p><p>Fate is ruthless. Luci's fiercer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Will Have Its Sacrifices

When I met her I saw something in her- that spark of ambition, that fire of pride. Rather than serve in heaven, reign in hell. Et cetera and all that shit.  
As bored rich girl Ellie Rigby never wanted anything besides the next easy fuck or cigarette or gig. Once I was Lucifer, all I wanted to do was perform. Everything was easy bordering on tedious: I was coasting on the essence of myself.  
But this girl dripped with coveting; I could just lick it off her skin. she desired to light the world, to flame and burn. She didn't care who she had to lie to, what she had to toss away. Just like me.  
She smelled like marshmallows and need.  
Right then I wanted something- wanted her.   
I would have destroyed the whole world if it meant I could perform to the ruins, but Laura-  
She wanted to be me more than I ever had. She would have killed for power, died for it. All that envy, all that covetousness. It felt so good to be around her, like she was an entire crowd of admirers wrapped in one intense soul. Soaking up worship from those big brown eyes had felt better than drugs.   
And she'd pushed me out of the way of bullets to which I was invulnerable, got between the Morrigan and her fuckboy for my sake-  
Yeah. Maybe in a world without gods we would have met. Me, still Ellie Rigby, flipping myself off in a store's glassy window, skulking with a thin-lipped pout, dreaming up poems that crackled lightning in my head-  
And then I'd be at a reading, spitting words like knives into the microphone. And I'd glance out with a half-raised single eyebrow, see this girl in the front row clutching a chapbook of my work, and she'd bite her lip a little, widen deep brown eyes, and wave shyly to me as I strolled off stage, waving one finger at a time.  
She'd offer to buy me a latte. Act a little surprised at how much I smoked, but not turn down a drag of a joint- it's herbal, yknow? Practically good for you.  
So we'd get a table outside near the side, by the alleyway, watch the people walk by in couples and families and with dogs.  
And then we'd talk for hours and hours. The sort of conversation everyone wants, but most people get. Where you skip the small talk and go straight to the craft of art, and you're so excited you keep talking over each other but it doesn't really matter, slamming the table for emphasis, yes, that's exactly what I've always thought, yes, you get it, I've never met anyone more fucking interesting than you-  
We meld into each other on the tube, one and a half seats tops, latching fingers, toying with her curls. She runs a soft hand through my prickly hair, caressing my scalp, and I shiver a little, drop my head to her shoulder, whisper things against her neck.  
Sneak upstairs through a darkened home, Laura pointing to the creaky places on the worn-carpet stairs so I know how to avoid them, and we lock ourselves in her pastel bedroom and turn on all the lights. She has a bedroom- a pile of discarded sweaters on the floor, socks at the foot of the bed, posters duct-taped up, and it seems so vulnerable and real.  
She has a deskful of notebooks and she reads to me- no, declaims, naturally dramatic, every word in perfect rhythm. Her fire bubbles through my veins. Laura I tell her you need to get your work out you're fucking amazing  
And she's like no you are  
And I'm like, yeah, but you are too.  
I draw her into a hug, and she nudges her forehead playfully against mine and smiles, and I kiss the perfect soft brown skin just above her collarbone, and we guide each other to the bed in a tangle of limbs, unbutton jeans and pull off shirts and unclasp bras- and I stay afterwards, the way I never do with Sakhmet, with Inanna, with anyone. I curl into the fullness and curves of her, I'm the little spoon, warm, and I tilt my head back against her and she kisses the pale shell of my ear and I do not dream of sulfur, not of war, nor throb with half-remembered wounds. I do not know when I will die and I feel safe and I breathe out-  
Whatever. I'm a god. There are sacrifices one has to make, and I know-  
Ananke is ruthless. She has to be.  
Sometimes gods don't want to die. One year eleven months, they cut and run. A god at full power, humming with praise, a crowd of eager fans behind them- they could take the old girl out for a year or two tops.  
She won't hurt us to bring us back. She loves us.  
But she'll hurt what we need. It's insurance, practicality- we can't hang around.  
Rome fell that way. The Great Fire of London, the Great Depression, the Black Plague, a lot of wars- she'll change thousands of destinies so we obey. It's hard to punish a god any way else. We shake off sickness, brush off pain. But losing worshippers- oh, we feel that. The ache and guilt. It weakens us.  
And after my fall from grace, Laura was all my worshippers, the only leverage that Fate had. To love is to be vulnerable; I needed her, needed her safe. Needed her on a level that went far beyond the mere buzz that a young god gets from prayer. If anything happened to her, even if I could get a thousand thousand followers in exchange- never again would I leave Hell. Not in my mind.  
(To make up for the fact that there was only one of her, Ananke would have killed her slow. First maybe her parents would lose their jobs, then they'd get cancer, run up bills. They'd lose the house, lose their lives- and then Laura and her sister would stay with separate foster families, but Laura's foster father would have an unfatherly eye and creeping hands-  
In a flash of divine insight I met Ananke's eyes behind the mask and knew that this is how it would end; Laura in a ripped hoodie fished out of the trash and month-old jeans, a hole in the toe of her sneakers, rattling a paper cup of change, her bright eyes dulled by hopelessness or drugs. Everyone who would have given her anything isn't carrying change, or takes a different route, and she is constantly ignored. She thinks that's just what she deserves. To be killed by Fate is to be killed by inches, so insidiously that it seems like your own damned fault; she no longer expects any better from life. It's November, and this Laura shivers in the thin sweat-stained fabric. At night it rains, biting, icy, cold as hopelessness- and my Laura leans her unwashed curls against the graffitied brick wall and closes her eyes-)  
I couldn't stay to be with her, but I would slip inside her skin, lick every part of her like tongues of fire. Wouldn't let her die cold.  
So I drew out my inspired gift, rolled it up and tossed it casually aside. I almost wished we'd been able to say I love you so carelessly, the way you say it when you've known each other forever, over text or over breakfast, when you're in your forties and running an arts festival together out in Vermont. The brightest part of me would have to do.  
My final act was one of irony- the Devil dying for another's sin, to keep innocence safe.


End file.
